


Parliament of the Mind

by vass



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14414226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: Anaander isn't happy with herself. So that's nothing new.





	Parliament of the Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackedofSpades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackedofSpades/gifts).



> This is for the R2SID fic exchange. Morgan asked for "TEEN ANAANDER. HORRIBLE BRAT ASS TEEN ANAANDER. Just have her being a loose cannon debauched mess OR a bratty spoiled rich kid OR BOTH. Can have her with Naskaaia or whoever the fuck. Make up OCs idc. Just showcase the worst awful bratty teen emperor to be that you can."
> 
> This is more of an angsty teen emperor than a bratty one as such, and it's post-AJ teen Anaander, not pre-cloning teen Anaander, but it was the best I could do.
> 
> Happy Independence Day, citizen!

Once there was a citizen who hated herself so much that she made over a thousand clones of herself and sent them forth across the galaxy that everyone else might suffer as much as she did. Her only mistake was connecting up the clones so that they could talk to one another. So that they talked to each other _all the time_.

(Yeah? Well I don't like me either.)

I hear the ancillary's nascent republic are giving serious consideration to democracy. That's the only good laugh I've had in more than twenty years.

(Why is Amaat Six afraid of Amaat Seven?)

I said _good_ laugh, and that one is only funny when my brain's no more than ten years old.

(Because Seven ate Nine!)

I've heard it before. I have heard it _so many times before_.

(I'm very world-weary for a seventeen-year-old.)

Yes, well, I have more than three thousand years of memories, and I've been seventeen more times than any other person living. I have _practice_.

As I was monologuing, before I so rudely interrupted myself, democracy. They have no idea what they're letting themselves in for. I can't even find common ground with myself, and I'm the same person. A little communication gap, a little different experience, a little change in biology, in neurology, and factions set in, governed by (ha) self-interest. I'm a stranger to myself. 

War and civil war have winnowed my numbers. For one of a scant few times since my first youth, I am mostly young again. I don't like it. I didn't like it then either, and I hate it worse now that I remember being a balanced population. If we survive this period, I'm freezing some elder and middle-aged mes for next time there's a shortfall. It won't help with the experience and knowledge gap —it'll make it worse, in fact— but at least I won't all be so biologically young.

(I remember trying something similar in the past. The problem with that idea is that the internal conflict gets even worse since the cohort I've defrosted to make up a generation gap really don't know how it feels. We remembered how it felt for the rest of me, but we didn't know how it felt _in those bodies_ , which was the experience gulf I'd defrosted us to remedy.)

Well, maybe it'll work this time! I'll figure it out. It's not like I have a better idea, other than trying not to get into that situation to begin with.

But those Athoekis, the meetings they will have. I want to watch. I _tried_ to watch, but I lost contact with the me I sent along as soon as Mercy of Kalr gated. Dead, I presume. I wasn't doing very well in that body even before then, though. It felt horrible. Nasty feeling, being someone else. I don't know how all the other people can stand it.

The ancillary had an Itran icon in her belongings. Someone made it in her image. People have made icons in my image too. More of them than I've made clones, in fact. She's not so special. I wanted to ask her about what she'd learned from almost twenty years of living as a single person, but I spilled icing on her icons instead.

If she could rejoin the rest of her, I wanted to ask, if she could share her memories with Justice of Toren, would she? Has she guessed yet how much weight that her would have given them? Her one voice shouted down by the many... unless she could press reinforcements into service. In retrospect, that did not help my cause. "We need to stop expanding," I said, while frantically making more of myself who agreed with me. It's no wonder I doubted myself. It was suspicious behavior.

And now the division is public, perhaps permanent. A part of me is wondering if the sex will be better. I suppose that's one possible form of diplomacy. Or of reunification. No, I don't expect the sex will be better, although I'll give myself this much, it is something I haven't tried before, and Hyr knows after three thousand years that's not nothing.

My thoughts wander to the Concourse. Station's listening to a couple standing outside the temple. It notices my attention and plays me their voices. "We should see other people," one of them says. Station glosses the phrase for me: they are both from a province where lovers commonly have monopolies on each other's affection. She's suggesting opening up their trade agreement to something more conventional. She hopes the variety will add some spice to their relationship. _We should just be other people_ , I imagine telling myself.

"It's not you, it's me," the other citizen replies wearily, shaking her head, and then walks away. I am so tired. I want to climb into bed with the me with the wretched taste in jokes but I have more work to get done first, and besides, I don't want to give myself the satisfaction.

(So I'll stay awake despite myself?)

Yes. Yes, I will. And anyhow, I'm too old to share a bed. Only servants and children and lovers do that. People who lack the cubic to sleep alone, or who are too afraid, or who want to be close. I do not lack cubic, nor do I want to be close — or why would I have expanded myself throughout the galaxy? And I'm not afraid.

(I'm stirring uncomfortably in my sleep.)

I'm not afraid, I'm not. There is nothing to be afraid of. It's just that sometimes bodies are swayed by what they've experienced, or have not experienced. The unknown. Like having met aliens and survived, or not having met aliens and survived. I can only access my full range of memories when I'm awake. When I'm asleep I only know the memories that body has personally reviewed or experienced directly. And when I'm very young, that's not enough data to know that it's safe to be alone: that nothing will happen to me, not even if an assassin should break in and kill my body. Which hasn't happened in, oh, days.

So it's time to review the latest reports from Hrad, and remember everything I can about the Presger so I can make good plans for the wretched Conclave. I might want to sleep, but this is not a democracy, and I _do not get a vote_.


End file.
